ATTACK ON YUGOSLAVIA

Jim Herron Zamora, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Monday, April 5, 1999

1999-04-05 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES -- A group composed mainly of Serbs and Americans of Serbian descent has taken to the streets of San Francisco to protest the NATO bombing campaign in the Balkans - saying they feel misunderstood and demonized in the media as killers.

"I think it's important that Americans see that we are human beings," said Ivana Jovanovic, a native of Serbia living in San Mateo. "We are not murderers. There are scared, innocent people who being bombed. . . . There are people who have nothing to do with the Kosovo conflict who are living in fear every night that they will be killed by an American bomb.

"Many of these these people are my own family, my friends - good people who have my love."

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Jovanovic grew up in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade. Like many of the more than 50 protesters who gathered at Powell and Market streets on Sunday evening, she feared for her immediate family. She said Serbs and Americans were being misled by propaganda from their respective governments.

Many protesters said they did not support the policies of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and are against the violence that has driven many Kosovo Albanians from their homes in the past few weeks. Nonetheless they strongly oppose the bombing and hope tension in the region can be resolved peacefully.

"The Serbian people do not want NATO troops on their soil," said Ljiljana Brajic of San Jose. "This could have been worked out peacefully. It would have been been complicated, but war does not help anyone."

The protesters, who came from all over Northern California, promised to return each weekend until the bombing stops. Many attend Orthodox churches around the Bay Area, and several clerics joined Sunday's rally.

The airstrikes began March 24 after more than a year of high tension and fighting in the region between Serbian government troops and ethnic Albanian rebel groups. The bombings began about a week after Kosovo Albanians unilaterally signed a peace deal calling for interim autonomy and 28,000 NATO troops to be stationed in the province.

Kosovo, which is about the size of Maryland, is the southern province of Serbia bordering Albania and Macedonia. About 90 percent of its 2.2 million people are ethnic Albanian. Yet many Serbs consider Kosovo to be the cradle of their history and culture, with numerous Orthodox monasteries.

On Sunday, Bay Area Serbs compared their ties to Kosovo to that of Jews to Jerusalem.

Some Serbs have said that Kosovo Albanian terrorist groups are trying to rob them of ancestral lands. Ethnic Albanians say they are descendants of the ancient Illyrians, who were Kosovo's first inhabitants.

The protesters on Sunday said that even though the tensions between the ethnic groups date back centuries, a resolution is possible.

"The bombing has only made it worse for everyone," said Zeljka Maksimovic of Concord. "The bombing of innocent people in Belgrade will only make people desperate. It will only kill innocent people who just want to go to work and live a quiet life just like people here in America do." &lt;

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